The Adversity Hack: Get Out of Your Own Way, Shift Your Thinking, and Change Your World

by Meg Poag

What if you could experience more joy in your life and work through your challenges, so you wouldn’t have to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again? In The Adversity Hack, CEO and leadership coach Meg Poag shares a powerful and effective personal development tool to help you shed the old beliefs that are holding you back and learn how to work to create real and positive change in your life. The system she introduces, called the Adversity Cycle, shows you how to begin to look at your circumstances with a fresh perspective and find a new way of moving through the world.

This book offers practical, down-to-earth lessons that will take you on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. As you practice and apply the steps of the Adversity Cycle, you’ll start to see changes right Things that used to bother you suddenly lose their importance. You have increased capacity for other ideas and points of view. And old patterns and mindsets that have kept you back in the past no longer seem to have a hold on you.

The Adversity Hack teaches you how to find balance and flow in your life by confronting the hard truths about your relationships, unfulfilled dreams, bad habits, and, ultimately, your ego-self. In using this essential life hack, you’ll make better decisions, get less upset by events throughout your day, and experience more joy and less pain - and you’ll know exactly how you want to live and what you need to do to get there.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction

Audible Audio

Published February 18, 2022

Reviews

[Lesley Pitre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book one of the best personal management tools that I have read. I love the moments of clarity I experienced reading the coaching moments and learning the adversity cycle. I still say to myself daily "Get out of your head and into your Heart". Meg's writing style is clear and to the point, which I also loved.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are good techniques and guidelines to help you live an authentic life and get rid of some of your own bullshit. Often, the best course of action is to change your own expectations to fit the situation that already exists, rather than to ask others to change.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Omg have I been reading this forever! Lol! I think I won this on Goodreads? Anyway there are a lot of great mindset takeaways. The coaching illustrations were too many. I liked how they talked about attachments, that was interesting.

[Meghan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't do it. Too many concepts that just don't work for 2024 and life is too short for this.

[Nette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is like what you see in movies when a hypnotist snaps their finger and you see things "for real". If you are ready to have the veil lifted and to really change your life, The Adversity Hack is the book for you. Meg Poag does a great job in being nurturing, guiding, and coaching your way into the "Real World". The world where you are in control and you are not sabotaging yourself. The steps, lanterns, and the coaching illustrations are so useful to anyone, in any path that you are in or any career, Meg Poag helps you get through it. It's an inspiring and motivating book that I truly enjoyed.

[Mike Burke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great new approach for personal responsibility.

The best part of this book is it presents a systematic, repeatable set of practices that can be used to lead yourself from a state of hopelessness, helplessness, and confusion into a state of action, hope, and power.

IMO, the language is a little too earthy in some places for no effect on clarify or excellence, and the last chapter, which discusses the pandemic, was totally useless and just a weak way to end the book.

However, I have been applying this system to parts of my own life for the last two weeks, and I hope that I get more skillful and apply it more elegantly in the future months.

[Gela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads Win -

I was actually surprised about how much I liked this book. I actually wanted to read it because I was sure it was something that would irritate me and I can write a long post on criticizing it. It was not what I expected! I was pleasantly surprised and I think this book it good common sense wisdom- “a wake up people” to why life may not be going your way. It’s a truly inspiration book that gives you constructive criticism -which is helpful without sounding like an arrogant asshat. I love it! And I highly recommend it anyone.

[Jai Sell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sincerely appreciated the writing and techniques in this book. It’s both helpful and rewarding to remove the veil that’s been permanently attached to your face for years. Highly recommend.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the Adversity Hack, I learned techniques that can help me with my relationships at work, and home, and also feel better about myself. Highly recommend to others!

[kathryn Morin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unsure of this book at first and thought why not give it a try. I absolutely loved is and it is so inspirational. It has helped me so much already.

[Nasir Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good techniques that can be used most of these are not new but presented with a lens on self control and understanding of who you are

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life coach stuff. People probably paid a lot of money for this in course form but I didn’t get a lot out of it. Basically, we’re all living in The Matrix of our own wrong thoughts about ourselves and what we can do. Notice your automatic responses and rewire them to create better mindsets and automatic responses. It didn’t really address the things that are in my way and skirted on the edge of toxic positivity. There’s one paragraph acknowledging racism, oppression and real barriers in the world and then it’s back to the message that it’s mostly just you in your own way.

I read an ARC of this book via netgalley.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would recommend this for anyone dealing with adversity (who isn’t?) who wants to reframe their internal dialogue to be more productive and self-compassionate. The writing is very direct and clear and provides various techniques or guidelines on how to deal or cope with challenging moments.